Mitcz.com : Official blog of Rev. Mitcz, the demented devilish comedian from Hollywood, CA.

In the world of design, being a designer isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. No matter how many years of experience you’ve got behind you, you’re only as much of an expert as the client will let you think you are. And, as any accomplished designer will tell you – the client is king. Anything they want, they get, and you will often want to kill them (and/or yourself) when they’re clearly in the wrong but won’t admit it. The reason for this? They’re an “expert” and you’re “just the designer”.

Want some examples? Some ways to deal with it? Maybe you just like to watch designers vent… then read on.

Warning : Geek Ahead

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been designing – specifically designing websites – for almost 10 years now. I’ve used every version of Photoshop ever officially released (and even a few betas) from 1.0 up to the most recent CS (v8.0). I’ve used GoLive since it became GoLive (upgrading from “Adobe PageMill”). Dreamweaver, I remember when that was released. Flash – I’ve used it since 2.0 and can actually remember where I was when 3.0 was released to the public.

I’m such a design geek, in fact, that I’ve actually used Photoshop’s versions as a guide to milestones in my career and as a timekeeper. “Hey man, remember the summer of ‘97?” you might say, to which I might actually reply “Yeah… man, Photoshop 4.0 was released a few months prior and introduced the amazing all-in-one Free Transform tool, finally bundled for free the PS Gallery Effects Filters, and introduced a live-updating text input window!”. Yes, I’m a total fucking geek for this shit.

My friend and I were talking the other day and he said that his culinary-school-graduate girlfriend has this intimate obsession with food. She’ll take herself out every few months to some really fancy restaurant and sit there all alone dining on their finest dishes, almost orgasmically. He had just received a nice bonus check from work, he said “I’ve been with her for some 7 months now.. and I’ve never been able to take her out to places like that, but tonight.. I am”. I didn’t quite get it, to be honest. He says “don’t you have anything that just.. ‘does it’ for you? Ya know.. something that, if you have the money, you’ll spend it on and just be happy as shit?”. My geek response? “Yeah. New hardware and software for my computer”.

I don’t “get” food. I don’t much care for it. Hell, I’m still trying to find a way to mix all the nutrients I might need throughout a given day into one quick “sauce” that I could just drink and get on with my day, without ever feeling hungry. Food is a nuisance, so far as I’m concerned. I mean – a good meal beats a shitty meal any day of the week, but there’s many things I’d rather spend my time and money on than that.

All things said – I’m a fuckin’ geek for this shit. I’ll admit it, without issue. I spend my free time reading design magazines, design websites, reading up on the latest software/hardware technologies, trying out the “free trial” on new software, and just generally keeping up on what’s new and exciting in the world of web technologies and design trends. This isn’t an entirely futile experience, however, as I’m one of the most qualified web designers you’re likely to find out there. Friends in and out of web, design, and computer fields come to me all the time for buying advice, reviews, tech support, et al. I am, to some, an “expert” in my field.

You would think, with all this shit under my belt, when a client wants me to design something for them – my opinion is the one that matters most. My professional opinion, certainly, should be of a certain paramount to them. Ditto for management that I’ve worked under. Shouldn’t my “expertise” count for something when it’s (sadly) one of my few great passions in life? In a perfect world, yes. In this world? Not so much.

A Lesson In Futility

I have a little story to tell. For those of you who require visual stimulation, I will provide pictures for the story. This is one that I’ve told people for the last 8 years now, because this story actually happened. Designers won’t be the least bit surprised, but those not in design will likely have to pick their jaws up off the floor, or get ice for their forehead that they’ll be smacking by the time it reaches its conclusion.

I would normally change the names of people and companies I’m talking about when telling stories, but I’m not going to do that this time. I have no desire to and I’d love to see them come after me for it. I’m still holding a grudge, because this little “incident” is what kept me from working in a design department for my entire professional life, until a few years ago when I fell into the porn industry.

The summer of ‘97 (yeah, yeah, the Photoshop 4.0 summer), I had just graduated high school and my friend Trevor and I were living it up, jobless, and taking regular trips from Phoenix, AZ to Sedona, AZ almost every weekend. My mom kept disappearing that summer to go off kayaking w/her new husband, so she’d leave behind “take care of yourself” money for me. It was always more than enough for me to live on, so I got a lot of playtime. Before you think I’m a spoiled bitch, you should know this was a first-time, last-time opportunity in my life. Near the end of the summer, my mom came to me to say she’d accepted a job in Colorado for teaching and would be moving in the next 2 months. My stepdad would be moved out by December, so I best get a job, a car, and an apartment. There went my summer.

I landed a job at a local newspaper. The name? “The Independent”. They were a shitty, free paper that you could get in those little metal boxes outside of Denny’s or whatever. They had one for each metropolitan-type area of Phoenix – Paradise Valley being the one I lived in at the time, and the one I would be working for. I started the job under the guise that I would be “designing” for them. Nope. Sorry. All I did was physically put onto layout sheets the logos and text for the companies that advertised w/them, and all the actual design work was already finished way before I got around to it. The rest of my time, I spent in the classified ads dept. working with customers to place “free” ads for the paper.

They had this little deal going on, hell.. they probably still do, where you could place an ad that was less than.. 20 words, I think, for “common household items, under $1,000″. Pretty sweet deal, if you just happened to wanna toss something common from your household and didn’t stand to rake in serious cash with it. The ad would run for 2 weeks, then it was your duty to call and renew it.

One lonely day my manager, Linda, came to me and said “I’d like to create an ad that advertises our ‘free classifieds’ in an eye-catching way. This is your chance to impress me”. I was pretty excited, really, cause… this was my first actual design job. I’ve never designed anything for anyone before – it was always either for myself, my band, or for an assignment in my design class in high school. I got to work right away, and while sitting there contemplating how to do it and what to say – I saw a nickel sitting on my desk that I’d play with when I was bored. I thought “that’s it!” and popped open my scanner, scanned the nickel, and got to work.

Here’s a crude version of what I came up with…

Pretty basic, no? I thought “hey, a picture’s worth 1000 words – I just need it to say a few here”. The support text below the headline basically filled in the details of the offer. That was more than enough space to write out “That’s right! When you place an ad for your common household item that you’re selling for under $1,000, we’ll give you 20 words in our paper, along with your contact information, for 2 weeks for free! When the ad runs out, just give us a call to place it again and it’ll run for another 2 weeks or until you tell us to cancel it. When you’re ready, just give us a call.”

So, here’s convo #1 with Linda (aka worthless whore):

Whore : Uhh… well, I like where you’re going with it, but… it needs to say more. It should at least say “THIS is more than…” so people know what you’re referring to.

Me : Isn’t a picture supposed to be worth 1000 words? I can’t get TWO outta that?

Whore : Well, I just think it reads better. It’s a complete sentence that way. It’s just proper english. We like to promote that. Also, it should say “in the Independent” instead of “our paper”. That sounds too generic.

Me : So, they’re not going to know what paper they’re reading, despite our name being on every page PLUS the bottom?

Whore : That’s how we do things, Mitcz. Go change it, please.

Fuck you, Linda.

I cursed under my breath, and then appeased the bitch. A little note for non-designers, companies love their fuckin’ name. They love it. They want it everywhere they can get it. Seriously, it’s a running theme “make sure our logo is on it – mention our name more”. “But.. sir, the ad just says ‘ShittyCo wishes you happy holidays, what else can I put there?”. “Well, I just want to make sure our logo is on the top and the bottom, so they realize it’s THE ShittyCo, and not just a ripoff using the same name”. Yes, that’s the logic of management people.

Now, the appeasement ad..

The conversations I’m writing out here are as close to the actual conversations as I can remember them. My sneering, defensive attitude isn’t exaggerated. I have little patience for ridiculous comments, and when they’re keeping me from getting my work done – they’re even less appreciated. So, I tend to get snippy and question everything. Isn’t that what my generation is supposed to do? Question Authority? Mmkay. Thought so.

Bitchface : Okay… it says ‘more than the cost of an ad’ but it’s not just “an ad” – it’s a classified ad. And, for free items. Cars aren’t included, for instance, you know that.

Me : Yes, I understand that, and that’s why there’s this paragraph of text explaining everything, right here.

Bitchface : I see nothing about not being able to sell cars in that paragraph.

Me : My bad, this is a mockup, so I can gladly add that line right now so we can send this off to print.

Bitchface : No, no… see, people don’t read anything. They’re not going to read that fine print. They’re going to think EVERY ad in our paper is free, no matter what. Our phones will be ringing off the hook.

Me : So, you’re actually telling me that people, READING a paper, aren’t actually reading it and they’ll come across this ad and assume the fine print is just filler, and toss aside the natural American paranoia about everything and just call up a random number to place an ad without reading a single line on the ad?

Bitchface : Yes, Mitcz. That’s what these people do. Also, we can bring the phone number’s size down a bit, else people might be calling the number before they know why they’re calling it, and bring up the size of the logo (editor’s note : remember what I said about companies and their names/logos?).

Me : Okay – so what about all this fine-print stuff?

Bitchface : Just make it bigger.

Me : Then people will suddenly decide it’s time to read?

Bitchface : I’m very busy, come to me with the changes.

Managers are also “very busy” a lot of the time. They don’t have time to tell you how to do your job. And they’ll say just that – “I don’t have time for this, you should know how to do your job”. I do know how to do my job. How about we switch places and we’ll see what the fuck you can do in an hour of sitting in front of my computer, and I’ll tell you a new reason every 10 seconds why it’s worthless shit to me?

The next appeasement..

Cuntrag : No, no, no… you didn’t change the headline. I just told you, people aren’t going to read fine print!

Me : You told me to make it bigger. It was 12 point Helvetica, now it’s 16 point Helvetica. That’s pretty big, and not really “fine” print anymore.

Cuntrag : The headline should say “This is more than what it costs to run a classified ad in the independent for household items under $1,000″ then give it a phone number, a little smaller, shrink the nickel down, and bring up the logo size a bit more.

Me : If I do that, you’re gonna have a 4-line headline. That’s ridiculous. What’s the fine print going to say?

Cuntrag : The fine print should be large, and should say “Cars may not be placed for sale in the Independent for free, regardless of price. However, we’ll gladly place your vehicle’s classified ad for a small fee. Call us for details.”

Me : I cannot believe you’re serious about this. That’s going to destroy my ad. It’s… that’s… I’ll do it just to show you how bad that looks

Cuntag : You do that, and we’ll take it to the head of the design department and she’ll tell you otherwise.

Me : And if you’re wrong, can I show her my original and get her opinion?

Cuntrag : Mitcz, you’re young and you’re fresh out of high school. I think you’ve got talent, but you’re not a designer. I didn’t hire you as a designer. Go make the changes I requested and then sit with (designer lady’s name, which escapes me) and she’ll tell you why it’s the preferred ad.

I was pretty fuckin’ upset by this point. I’d actually been working at this place for about 6 months now. I had another job, telemarketing no less, lined up that I was ready to take. Knowing I could never put up with Linda’s overwhelming stupidity, I decided I would appease her and keep the copies of the ad that I made so I could tell this story to people later in life. I still have those copies somewhere, but… they’re in a box somewhere. Oh well. In that box I’ve also got all the printed papers that show the company logos I “modified” to look like Jesus being fucked in the ass, guys w/their cocks hanging out, and a few hidden curse words behind certain areas that probably only I was able to see. I wouldn’t probably do that now-a-days, but then.. you shouldn’t be a fuckhead to your designer anymore than you should yell at the guy in the drive-thru. He can spit in your food, I can photoshop a penis onto your logo that you won’t see until it goes to print.

Now, this is the pile of shit that my ad became..

The fucking bitchmouth looked over it, said “hmm…” and then “c’mon..” to usher me towards the head of the design department. This is a lady I’ve never met before, oddly enough, but I was excited to see Linda be so very fucking wrong. I may not know much – but I know that ad is a pile of shit. I had secretly placed a copy of my original ad in my pocket, to show this designer lady. I’m gonna call the designer lady “Sally” cause I can’t remember her name.

Bitchmouth : Sally, could you come take a look at this ad, and tell me if we could run this

Sally : Sure.. what ya got there?

Bitchmouth : This is an ad that Mitcz did

Me : It’s actually nothing like what I made…

(now cutting me off)

Bitchmouth : Just let me know your full opinion

Sally : I don’t wanna be rude, but.. Mitcz – where did you go to school?

Me : You mean for design? I took a class in high school

Sally : And they told you to use 18 point Helvetica for support text and 4-line headlines?

Me : No… I…

(cutting me off again)

Bitchmouth : Can we run this ad?

Sally : Are you kidding me? With a 4-line headline? Why didn’t you just write all of that in the support text? Smaller, support text, no less. And, You could make the headline much cleaner and shorter. Focus on the nickel, that’s what grabs their attention.

Bitchmouth : You see, Mitcz? We can’t run this ad.

I was so pissed, I couldn’t even respond. She just blamed her design decisions on me. I couldn’t take it. I actually quit right then and there. I said “Linda – you can go to hell, and I’m going home” I grabbed the ad, ripped it up and said “THIS! Is NOT my ad, Linda and you fucking know it!” and I pulled out the “good one” and showed it to Sally. She said “This is much better”. I grabbed it out of her hand and said “Good – then you can design it for Linda and we can all pretend this whole thing never happened”.

I haven’t been back in a mainstream design department since. Not because of a bad reference, but because that left me with such a bad taste in my mouth, I decided I didn’t want to have to put up with a management person ever again.

Problem is – clients aren’t a great deal better. And, while your manager might let some shit slide on one project because they can pass it to the next designer, or make you stay late for fear of losing your job – a client will just cease communication and payment for your work and have the whole project swept out from under your feet. It’s happened to me before, and it ain’t pretty.

That story, however, was very real. It has become, however, a metaphor for how designers and “creative directors” (as they’re sometimes called) tend to disagree. When the person who approves your designs doesn’t like what you’ve done, they’ll tell you to change it. Not being a designer, they have no idea how they want it changed. They just know they don’t like what they see. This leads you on a sort of design wild goose chase, until you appease them. When someone who they’ll admit knows more than them tells them the err of their ways – they will blame it all on the designer.

It is my firm belief that all great things in this world were rejected by idiotic management people several times before someone finally sought out the right person (or did it on their own dime) to see it through to the final stages. I believe there’s probably 100’s of 1000’s of amazing products out there that we may never see because some stuffed-shirt asshole is telling someone they consider to be a “lackey” that their brilliant idea “will never work”. I don’t mean just in design, by the way.

Did you know that Intel used to make the processors that ran stoplights – but when an employee said “we should make a computer for the home!” was told “why would anyone want one of those?”. The employee, relentlessly dedicated to the idea, came up with several reasons, amongst those: an advanced calculator, a place for the wife to keep her recipes, and a place for lawyers to keep their important documents for archival. It wasn’t for another 15 years that IBM came to them and said “make processors for our home computers – we’ve got to beat these Apple people”.

Also computer-related (I told you, I’m a geek), Xerox (yeah, the paper and copier people) had a research lab called “XEROX PARC” (Palo Alto Research Center) where they had invented a working computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface – meaning a visible, non-text-based interface… basically, what most of us use today), a “mouse” (though they called it something else at the time), computer response to voice commands, the folder/window/file metaphor, Ethernet, and local networking. In 1981, Xerox came to PARC and said “what the hell is all this shit?” and were given a very thorough presentation. The management people said “yeah, that’s great and all but.. who needs a computer in the home? And, who’s gonna figure out all this file/folder/window stuff? This is ridiculous!”. They immediately told PARC to shut down their research and move on. Just before they did that, they invited a man named Steve Jobs into the labs to check out the work. They said “yeah, we’re just gonna throw all this stuff away – you want it?” He said “yeah!!!” and in 1984, Apple Computer headed by Steve Jobs, introduced the first home computer complete with a GUI, and called it a Macintosh. Microsoft followed suit some years later, after having been invited to PARC just weeks after Jobs, and they developed an OS for IBM’s home computer and called it “Windows”.

One day, I’ll write a book about all the times management people have prevented the furthering of our technology, of progress, and.. perhaps of mankind. If God had a boss, we’d all be platypuses.

How To Handle “Experts” Who Don’t Know Shit

While I’ve given you a pretty solid example of just how much of a pain in the ass it is to be a designer, and I’ve got more examples than I could shake a stick at, it’s important to realize that there are alternatives. Alternatives that, if executed well enough, could get that design you’d hate to let go see its way to final print (or final upload, for the web designers out there).

First off, you have to throw out a vast portion of your ego. As a designer, you should never become too attached to any one design. If you’re going for a look that your company hasn’t seen anything like before – try to be quick about doing a mockup first. This way, you’ve not invested too much time in it when they say “what the hell is this? get back to the drawing board, kid!”.

You should know that most of the time, the first thing you come up with for any client or boss – they’re going to hate it. Or, if you’re lucky, they just won’t mind it that bad. Even if they tell you they love it, change it anyway cause they’re secretly disliking it or they’ll wait until it’s further along to tell you so. This might be how they exercise control – it’s an age-old business tactic “reject their initial offer”, so they’ll reject you the first time, almost every time. Be prepared for that. Personally, I always mock up something very rough that I’m not altogether happy with and I show that to them, just to get a feel for what they want. Then, if they love it, I just “up the ante” and make it look a fuckload better. If they totally hate it, I change all the colors and then I did a little different layout. Most of the time, they won’t notice and they’ll consider it an improvement and now you’re making progress.

Once you’ve got a design that they’ve semi-approved, timeliness is of the essence. The longer they have to wait for a final product, the more they’re going to hate how it looks. Why? Because it becomes old, it’s not new and exciting anymore. So, you want to make sure you work fast. That’s important – but be thorough when you’re taking something from mockup to final, you don’t want them to be able to point out all of your mistakes. After a few mistakes, depending on how “expert” they consider you to be, they’ll just ask you to start all over again. No good.

Okay, so now you’ve got your design for “Spiffy Nights Vacation Resort” almost finalized. You present it to the client, and they want their logo bigger. Fuck. You can’t do that, the whole design is perfectly balanced as it is, and that’s a change that would throw the whole thing off. But, you have to know they don’t understand “delicate balance” because they’re business people and business people always laughed at the drama kids and the “weird” art students and all your fancy designs don’t mean shit to them and they’ll never quite understand why making their logo take up 1/2 the page of an ad with a picture of a beach on the other half doesn’t leave room for any support text that they simply MUST have in there.

Where do you go from there? You have two options – appease the client, or confuse the client.

You already know what to do for appeasing the client, you bend over and do as they say. That’s pretty easy. But what about this other option – confusing the client? Let’s take this example..

You want to say:

Look here, bubba, you don’t know shit about design and you can’t quite fathom that this whole ad is based on the delicate balance of whitespace, and cranking up the size of your logo would force me to kill myself over the sheer ugliness of it or I’d have to start over from scratch and I don’t want to spend another minute dealing with you and your shitty decisions as a non-designer!

Instead, we’ll confuse the client and bend them to our ways, with something like…

Okay.. if I crank your logo up too much, you’re going to impede on all the other things in this ad. Your logo, at this size, in this space, creates a perfect symbiotic relationship with the surrounding whitespace – even though it’s not white, we call it whitespace – and it actually causes your logo to stand out MORE at this size because of the path of your eye throughout the ad. You don’t want to focus on your logo too much, because it will confuse the viewer and they’ll move along. You want them to say “Wow – vacation in Maui? Who’s doing this?” and THEN see your logo. This way, you’re focusing on the product and they feel trust from the offer, without being bogged down w/the specifics. This creates an easing, and makes the consumer feel like they’ve got the power and a consumer who feels like they’re in charge is a consumer with spending power that’s not afraid to use it. However, I could make the logo a bit bigger, but it’s going to cause me to start over from scratch to capture that “perfect feel” for the consumer all over again – and it looks like we’re running out of time. But, it is your choice

That might be a tad exaggerated. However, the point is there. We’ve confused the client with fancy terms, let them in on what sound like design secrets, proved our “expertise”, and then topped it off with offering them the final choice on the matter – but making it sound very unappealing to cause you to do all that work. Most of the time, long speeches like that will work. If they don’t – you can either tell them to fuck off, appease their needs, or start over from scratch cause maybe that design was for shit in the first place and that’s why they can’t decide what needs to change.

Supposing that does work, what happens next? Well, you’re either ready for print (or to “go live” with the upload, in web design terminology) or they’re going to bring on the opinion of someone they consider to be an expert. Usually, this is another designer. This is where life starts to suck

The “Other” Expert

Designers are some critical, catty bitches. I don’t know why but it seems that, unless you’re working with them, any designer other than you is a worthless fool. If you don’t believe me, find a designer at random and show him a random design and ask for his opinion. He or she will wax emphatically about every nuance of the piece. Rarely, if ever, will they say something nice, unless they’re just trying not to sound like a negative bitch. Something like “…… but it’s not a BAD design, I’m just not a fan of that typeface, personally” is very common to hear at the end of a designer’s rant.

If a client/boss seeks the aide of another design to mull over your design – that designer is going to hate it, unless you two are on good terms. This is the case about 98% of the time. In fact, even non-designers who have no expertise and no say on the matter whatsoever will rarely give you a good opinion on your design when asked by your client/boss. Everyone’s an expert… except you.

Just last week, I was making an ad and the client showed it to about 5 different people and CC’d me on their responses. Every one of them had SOMETHING to say about it. Most of them liked it “but…. I would say, change this…”. Each of them suggested a different change for a different thing. Most of these things conflicted. After all, when one pseudo-expert says “keep it black” and another says “this would be better if it were blue” then what can you do? Personally, I just copped an attitude and said “who are these people, why does their opinion supersede mine, and which one of them do I listen to when there’s a conflict of design interest?”. I got no response, I finished the ad on my own terms, and the client was perfectly happy. I just assume they think I took the advice of the people asked – since the client didn’t bother to read their actual responses.

When you don’t have the luxury of ignoring the “expert” designer (or whomever they ask), then you can either try confusing them, or pretend they’ve confused you and do something that will appease them enough but still keep you happy. What I mean by this is that if, for instance, another designer says “they really should make this image more ‘dramatic’ and maximize the whitespace in this area” (which, I swear to you, I’ve actually heard from another designer who was sought out for his opinion) you’re fucked out of the option of trying to confuse them. They’ve trumped you on bullshit terms. No two designers that know and respect one another will ever say “I like how you’re maximized the drama on this photo and your delicate balance of whitespace is nothing less than amazing”. They’ll say “that’s pretty badass – reminds me of that Silence of the Lambs movie poster… cool shit, man”.

So, taking that bullshit line – you fake confusion and move some things around, brighten the image and give it a border. Then you present it to the client with “they suggested maximizing whitespace and dramatizing the image – I hadn’t considered going that far with it, but I agree and I think it looks much better now”. If all goes well – you’re more respected for following that direction, not being a dickhead about being

“wrong” but you’ve also not admitted fault and therefore you’re one step closer to being the “expert”.

It’s this delicate balance of confusing the client and their colleagues enough to get your design finished, pretending to be confused so you don’t have to keep starting over from scratch, and trying to actually make the best design you can from the get-go that comprises just about every design you’ll ever make in your life.

It’s sad, but it’s true.

And, that concludes our design lesson this time.

Feel free to comment. I know there’s likely to be at least one pretentious designer out there that’s biting his knuckles because I’ve been a bit too blunt about the bullshit we sometimes have to spew out, and will claim all design is “pure art, from the gods themselves” and will finish with “but you suck as a designer anyway”. That’s cool, blow me.

Diggin' my shit? Well then..